Thursday, January 01, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire

I did not like it. The hype was unbelievable, I just wanted to watch it badly. But boy, I was disappointed and angry.

First of all, yes , India has grave problems. Poverty, Communal Violence, Child labor, Child Prostitution etc... But the way it is shown in the movie, it is just, yuck. The India shown here is the darkness : Filth and shit and disease and blood. This condition prevails but it reaffirms a Westerner watching the movie that India is full of stench. I could almost smell the stench from the movie scenes... gimme a break!! I dont want to meet a westerner who has seen slumdog millionaire think of all Indians as Slumdogs.

A small child diving into the gutter with his nose closed to get an autograph of Amitabh Bachchan who comes in an airplane running with gutter water dropping. The height of imagination.

And the hero of the movie, Dev Patel does not have an Indian accent and he does not look like a slumdog. He looks like a polished Brit-Indian or Amer-Indian guy with zero Indian accent. A chaiwallah with so much hardships looking like Dev Patel , a nerdy NRI ...hahah.

What the hell was Anil Kapoor doing in this movie ? He looks like a weird slimmed down version of a grizzly brown bear wearing a suit. Rahman was not at is best in the music department.

And in India "Who wants to be a Millionaire" is fondly called Kaun Banega Crorepathi.

Maybe it's just me. I did not like Slumdog. Dont take my opinion ... Just watch it. But the potrayal made me baised in the beginning itself.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i liked the movie .. the narration was excellent.. i generally like movies which switches between the present and the past ..

the slum looks realistic.. the actor doesnt (his accent especially).. liked Rehman's background music .. the sitar is great ...

there are loose ends, uninvestigated murders, unreported crimes, treatmeent of kids etc

and a large part of India is still in stench mannnn.. cant be seen in the upscale areas though..
Gutthalli nodudre saaku..need not go to dharavi mumbai..

i dont know if it was us, we had been to Autograph movie in Uma theater - Chamrajpet and there were these Europeans who had taken the slum kids to the movies..and the kids were smart enuf like Salim (from Slumdog millionaire) taking advantage of those volunteers...

but agree can showed a large part of better India than the lagging India.. The White Tiger does the same..
GD

clangorous said...

Westerners give awards only to such movies...especially since this had a western screenplay and a western director....

I personally object only Hindi cinemas being portrayed as Indian Cinema... We have much better cinemas in other languages...

If you want to see a real story of how a slum boy is misused by our politicians and how they eliminate the same person whom they encouraged to grow.. you should see the movie 'Slum Bala' which has the story, screenplay and dialogues by Agni Shridhar of 'Aa DinagaLu' fame.. It was really a heart touching movie...but what to do psuedo nationalists of India are happy to promote only bollywood filth as Indian Cinema and most of our people happily accept it having the false notion of National Language... Lot of good cinemas of other languages are not getting their due recognition because of Hindi Imperialism